For the sixth time, the German startup hubs of Munich, Cologne, Berlin, and Hamburg honored their Startup Champs. This year, the competition sought the best AI solution in a B2B context. An expert jury, consisting of Markus Gick from XDeck, John Lange from AI.Fund, Marian Gläser from Brighter AI, and Fabian Heil from the Munich Innovation Ecosystem, selected the winning startups. From three young companies in each city, a regional winner was chosen, and finally, an overall winner was selected.
The startups went to Munich Jessy Works, Lynkt and Beetroute Jessy Works secured the regional victory. The startup develops AI-powered accounting assistants specifically for tax offices. The system works directly within existing programs, without requiring additional software. Jessy takes over tasks such as document posting, dunning, and bank reconciliations, thus providing immediate relief. This is intended to save tax advisors time, reduce costs, and increase their efficiency.
Like all regional winners, Jessy received a ticket to the CEO summit and the international startup conference Slush 2026. She also won a one-year membership to the Bulb platform and special prizes from the respective savings banks. The Munich Savings Bank sponsored a booth, including a pitch opportunity, at the next event. Munich Startup Festival.
The twelve finalists included the Munich-based startups Lynkt and Beetroute. Lynkt's AI creates a digital twin of all company data and automatically connects it. This makes information findable, harmonized, and usable for AI applications – all without changing systems. Beetroute, on the other hand, is working on an app designed to simplify grocery shopping for users. Based on digital shopping lists, the AI provides information about which supermarkets offer which items and at what price.
The overall winner comes from Hamburg
The title "Startup Champ 2025" went to Hamburg for the second year in a row. The startup Cloudsupplies combines IT service monitoring and artificial intelligence to automatically solve routine IT tasks. With this solution, Cloudsupplies secured the overall victory in the form of a €300,000 investment from XDeck (subject to successful due diligence), executive coaching at Microsoft, and access to the Microsoft AI Leadership Circle.
Arno Eggers, Head of Munich Startup, comments:
"The 'Startup Champs' collaboration impressively demonstrates the immense innovative power of our German startup hubs. This year's pitch competition boasted a very strong field of participants, including three outstanding startups from Munich. Even though the overall victory went to Hamburg this year, it underscores the strength of our local AI ecosystem. This collaboration generates valuable visibility and connects the startup scenes in our cities. Together, we are providing a significant boost to Germany as a startup location."
The initiative Startup Champs Germany emerged from the close collaboration of Munich Startup, Werk1, Berlin Partner, Köln Business and Hamburg Invest and serves to network the respective ecosystems.
